September 2011

September 29, 2011

New for Jack this year is daily written math practice. By the end of last year he was doing written math practice about twice a week. And he hated it. A lot. Last year I randomly made up practice sheets based on what we were currently working on. This year I'm using the free year of arithmitic facts practice sheets found at the Making Math Meaningful site. I reviewed that wonderful book previously here. The sheets are designed as a year long progression and the download has a great introduction to using them.Every couple of days I copy a few more days into Jack's math practice book. Who doesn't love a composition notebook?

Because they start off so easy, he is feeling very successful in math so far this year, and more willing to tackle difficult problems. I'm loving exploring all the different ways to understand math that I was never taught. Who knew math could be so much fun? Off to update that math notebook now!

September 28, 2011

The last few days have been really rotten. The type of rotten where it's hard to tell where my rotten starts and the kids' rotten ends. The hardest thing for me about these types of days is the knowledge from personal experience that if I could just pull myself the hell out of my funk, my better attitude could turn everything around. Nothing like having a crappy time and knowing that no matter who started it, it's your fault it isn't better yet. During lunch yesterday something happened, I can't even remember now but if it was a meal time it was probably Lucy saying something insulting about the food in front of her or complaining because there was a possibility someone in the world may have gotten more of something than her. I had just had it. The school morning was not good - it included a bee flying into Jack's rain boot and him screaming about how he was going to kill all the bees in the world and never go back outside. Plus all my school planning felt rote and forced. Back to lunch, I picked up my bowl of whatever, left the table and sat on our back staircase by myself. Then I proceeded to sob. During which time I prayed desperately to God to open my heart, stop the vitriol that wanted to pour out and also, please, stop me from wanting to put my kids on the first school bus that drove by. Then I cried some more because memories of my mom crying hysterically are not a high point of my childhood.

The rest of the day was pretty much downhill from there, broken up by a playground trip to meet friends that probably shouldn't have happened based on behavior earlier in the day, but I really needed another mother's company. I felt heavy the rest of the day with the weight of sadness. How could my feelings change so quickly? Last week I was thanking God that I was lucky enough to be at home doing all the things that on this day felt like a burden. I took this sadness into sleep with me and woke with an open and healing heart. And the urge to answer everything I came across today with kindness and love. Novel concept, right? That I should respond to my own children with kindness and love? Why is my first reaction to respond to them as a child would? Why does it feel good to lash out with sharp words and assumptions of guilt, when I know that immediately afterwards I will feel bad?

I had to consciously choose kind responses this morning, but as the day wore on I actually felt like responding in that way, and the mood in the house palpably lightened. Damn, right back to me being the weather maker around here. I've accepted that that is what it is, but when will this learning stick? I feel like I've already done this lesson hundreds of times.

September 26, 2011

What a difference a summer can make! Although we read much in the news about summer loss in regards to academic gain, I haven't found that to be true at all with my little Waldorfites. Waldorf pedagogy espouses the idea of introducing new material, working with it deeply for a while and then "putting it to sleep" until you come back to it again. So, for example, we work with math quite deeply for a month, and then set it aside for a bit. I have found time and again that when we come back to it, Jack is quite ahead of where he was when we last left it. It is as if his brain has had the freedom to percolate the new knowledge and make bridges to a deeper understanding.

This has held very true as we come back to formal learning from our summer break. Several things that were challenging for him are coming much more easily this year. Most noticeably his ability to sit at the table and work for much longer periods of time. Without tears or much prodding, he can fly through his daily math practice and copy work. In fact, he has decided he is a math wiz after spending last year convinced that he hated math. He is still having a tough time with writing independent compositions, but I'm feeling better about it after reading this great post at Handmade Homeschool. He can orally create wonderful compositions and reads at a level much more advanced than his writing, so I know the writing will come.

Handwork is much less frustrating for him this year as well. He has completed an embroidery he started at the museum a few weeks ago and will knit for half an hour without complaint. In a related observation, he also has much trickier jump roping skills than he did last year! He can add spins in the middle and has learned to jump in and out.

I see that "nine year change" happening with him, however I feel as if we have some good routines with each other in place to carry us through it with out too much drama.

Lucy comes into this school year having already done or observed much of first and second grade and I'm realizing I'm going to have to make some adjustments to that. Add into it her already high achieving nature and you have a girl quite disappointed that "school is too easy". So, back to the plan for the year to add a few tweaks and a little more challenge. The trap I don't want to fall into is that of essentially having two third graders this year. She needs first and second grade first! So I will mainly stick to giving her the typical Waldorf first grade, but find ways to make it more challenging.

I'm pleasantly surprised because I thought that it would be harder schooling Lucy compared to Jack. Jack most of the time thinks that I am smart and right about things. Lucy, not so much. I was concerned that this would make it harder to teach her. But I am finding that she is very school inclined and also very glad to finally have it be her turn for "real" school.

What changes have you seen in your children this year? What adjustments have you already had to make to your school plan?

September 23, 2011

Now that I've quit working (for pay) John and I have some days off together for the first time in four years. But he is off M, T and W. Monday and Tuesday are school days for us, and Wednesday Jack is normally at wilderness class so Lu and I hang out in town with friends. Jack didn't have class this week, so we took advantage off the odd day off and went for a family hike. How is it possible that we had never taken John to one of our very favorite hiking spots? It has drama, a little danger, climbing, caves, waterfalls! It is usually the first place we take out of town guests. I didn't yell at anyone as we were packing to leave the house. Lucy cried for only half of the hike. These are both major improvements.

September 22, 2011

I've struggled mainly with two things in bringing form drawing to Jack (and now Lu). First, I've found it hard to bring an imaginative aspect to it. I can look at a form drawing book and see the sequence of suggested forms, but am not readily able to imagine the forms as images that could be from a story. Second, teaching form drawing quickly devolves into a situation where I turn into the task master making Jack do it, "Again!!! Keep your line straight! Look at your page, can't you see that it isn't straight!!!" Ughh. In my third year of homeschooling I'm finding myself much more conscious of what activities bring that out of me.

But, I knew that I wanted to do more form drawing this year, and try and catch Jack up to where he should be with it grade wise. Also, his handwriting and ability to orient himself on a page aren't great and form drawing will help with this. Lucy likes this type of thing as a challenge. Over the summer Carrie posted a great idea using Brambly Hedge books. We love Brambly Hedge. As I looked through the book, I could find lots of images to translate into forms and I realized it is much easier to start with a story and find forms than it is to start with a form and come up with a story, for me anyway!

As I mentioned before we used Steiner's indications for the first day of first grade as the basis for our first day. After we ran around looking for lines and curves we sat down and read Brambly Hedge Autumn.

Day Two

I reread Brambly Hedge and this time we looked in the book for line and curves. We found lots, of course. I pointed out the tall corn standing in straight rows, also nicely mimicked in the field behind our house. We ourselves stood straight in a line together. We used Planx blocks to make our own long rows of evenly spaced corn. We drew straight lines in the air with our fingers and then we moved to the chalk board. Jack and Lu also used their white boards for lots of practice before the form was put onto paper.

Day Three

Retold Brambly Hedge and pointed out the cupboard shelves in the Store Stump, lots of nice horizontal lines. We made these again with our Planx blocks and then made some on the board.

Then for some laughs we all tried drawing the form with our feet.

After some practice on the white boards, the form was drawn of paper which will be bound later. Then we ate a yummy snack of blackberries and cream, just like the mice of Brambly Hedge.

Day Four

This day was a Monday and the day Jack started his block on food preservation while Lucy continued with this one, so there was a little more juggling on my part. Lucy retold the story and we looked at the pictures of all the berry patches with their many thorns and brambles. We used a running form to represent the thorns.

The mice are drying lots of food in the book, so it worked well as a bridge to start Jack's week learning about drying foods. On this day I started offering Jack some trickier forms to do, mostly harder variations of the ones Lucy was doing.

Jack and Lucy also started working on a mural of Brambly Hedge. I drew in some really rough images of the little town, and they got busy on the details.

Day Five

I didn't have a form picked for today, so we looked through the book to find a good one for our last day. Lucy chose a circle, based mainly on the house of some field mice. On this day we got right to work drawing and didn't really do any body movement for the circle. I get a little tired of "moving" the forms and haven't really found a way to do it that seems to resonate. We drew big circles in the middle of the white boards. Then we drew lots of little circles in patterns.

After this we practiced drawing concentric circles, first from the outside in and then from the inside out. In the end Lucy decided to use the single large circle and the concentric circles and make two entries for her form drawing book.

I'm trying to bring a more playful attitude to form drawing. Yes, you need to be quiet and concentrate when doing your best work at the end, but it is fun to mess around with lines and curves and give yourself a bit of challenge, too. This was our most successful attempt yet, it you judge success by lack of tears.

September 20, 2011

In my dream world I would go to bed at 1:00 and wake up around 9:00. Jack and Lucy don't quite agree with this plan though. Most mornings Jack is up by 6:30 and Lucy around then, too. Honestly though, four years ago 6:30 seemed like an impossible dream as Jack was almost always up around 5:00. When Jack wakes up, he is UP!!! ready to take on the world. So, mornings have always been a struggle for us.

I read this challenge here, and decided that the start of the school year would be a good time for a little goal setting. I'm not actually doing the challenge, since it was all filled up, but I made up a plan for myself and a week into I can see it making a difference. The first two days I got up at 5:30, but that ended up being too early. So my time now is 5:45 (not on weekends!). At 5:45 I get up and make some coffee or tea. I sit around for fifteen minutes with it and look at the window. After this I spend 30 minutes on something spiritual or otherwise eddifying to me personally. On Mondays I plan to listen to the previous day's sermon from the church I miss. Last week I also spent some time meditating on various family members and reading for a Steiner book study at Homespun Waldorf. Then onto 20-30 minutes of some type of exercise, yoga and stretching for now and hopefully running by the end of the week.

Jack and Lucy are allowed to turn on their lights and read in bed at 6:30. My promise is that I will come and get them out of bed by 7:00. Our mornings really are so much smoother when I wake up before them. And really, what kid doesn't want his/her mama up to greet them? I can't set the tone for the day when I'm hiding under the covers. Before I started this routine, I awoke most mornings to them fighting. Maybe they realized I would get out of bed when I heard crying and yelling?

Now I really have to work on the counterpart to this new plan, getting to bed at a reasonable hour.

September 19, 2011

Lucy and squash baby. Who ever knew squash are such needy babies? This one needed near constant attention.

Part Two

On the way home from church today our conversation somehow ended up in a discussion of immortality. The concept of which led to this exchange:

Lucy: Well, what if you are immortal and something sucks all the blood out of you, what happens to you then?

Jack: You can't suck all the blook out of someone who is immortal. Someone who is immortal is like God.

Lucy: Well, what if something sucks all the blood out of God?

Jack: God doesn't have blood.

Lucy: Well, God must be full of something, what if something sucks all of that out?

Jack: The only thing God is full of is wisdom. You'd have to suck out all of that.

Part Three

In bed tonight, Lucy sang to me:

"Sweet potato, mommy pie, I love you do you want to know why? Cause you're smart and funny and know how to cook. And you clean the whole house. Plus you make apple pie with the best crust in the world."

The crust was most decidedly not the best crust in the world. It was quite a dud actually.

September 16, 2011

I taught myself to play the pentatonic flute several years ago, knowing that I wanted some experience before I taught J and L. I can read music, so I just taught myself using the fingering chart that came with the Choroi, and then I played music mostly from the Elisabeth Lebret book. I thought that it would come easily when I was ready to teach Jack at the start of first grade, but when the time came I just wasn't sure where to start. I looked at several books at the Steiner library, but couldn't find anything that great. I ordered Playing and Teaching the Pentatonic Flute and Pentatonic Recorder by David Darcy and I ended up being very pleased with it. It comes with a CD with all the music which I think would be very helpful if you were just learning how to play yourself.

It starts with a good introduction on why to start with the pentatonic flute, its limitations/strengths and how to introduce it. It also includes a story to go with giving the flute, but I better the one I shared yesterday. Next is a section for the adult to teach him/herself. Then comes the real meat of the book - pentatonic songs Darcy has written himself listed in the order in which he taught them to his class. One downfall of this book is that he doesn't write out clearly "how" to teach these songs to your child/children. However, we used simple imitation, sitting at chairs across from each other, and it worked out really well. The first song involves just the left thumb! And the next the left thumb and left index finger. The songs increase in complexity in a really manageable way.

Jack really liked the songs, and was proud of his ability to learn them. By the end of second grade he knew approximately 15 songs by heart and could play them quite well. Lucy is only on day 2, so if Jack's experience is a guide will be working on controlling her breathing while trying to coordinate her fingers at the same time. Watching her learn I'm reminded that one of the main reasons to start with a wind instrument is that it is so helpful in moving towards a very regulated breathing cycle.

The book ends with a retelling of "Masha and the Bear" with several songs to learn interspersed. I think we may turn this into a play this year.

If I get really brave, maybe I'll have Jack video me teaching Lu one day next week.

September 15, 2011

I received this story at a conference several years ago. Like many stories and verses you get at a Waldorfy conference, this is on a photocopied page with no author attributed, so I'm going to share it. Jack didn't know he would learn the flute in first grade, so I told this to him the night before his first lesson and in the morning his own flute magically appeared. Lucy has know since then that when she started first grade Jack would move up a flute and she would receive his. I read this story to her yesterday, on our first actual day of school.

Dear Heart and the Recorder

Once upon a time there was a young shepherd boy whose name was Dear Heart. In the small village where he lived there was a beautiful young maiden whom Dear Heart liked very much. But the beautiful young maiden took no notice of the young shepherd boy.

One day Dear Heart took his sheep out into the meadow to graze. The beautiful warm sun made him very sleepy. He decided to take a rest beneath the boughs of a majestic maple tree. He soon fell into a deep sleep. In his dream he heard beautiful music. He looked up to find that a woodpecker had made holes in one of the branches and as the wind passed through the branch beautiful music was made. Dear Heart wished that he too could make such beautiful music.

When Dear Heart woke from his dream, to his amazement, a beautiful recorder was sitting in his lap. Dear Heart picked up the recorder very carefully. He felt the smooth surface of the branch given so freely by the tree. He admired the holes made by the woodpecker. He held the recorder to his lips and gently blew through the recorder as if he were a gentle breeze. He too made beautiful music.

Dear Heart carefully wrapped the recorder in his scarf and tucked it in his pocket. He thought of nothing else as he brought his sheep home for the night.

A few months later all the people in the village were gaily celebrating a festival. Everyone had worked so hard to make this day so special. Dear Heart wanted to do something special for everyone so he began to play his recorder. Everyone enjoyed his music so much - especially the beautiful maiden.

Year later, Dear Heart and the beautiful maiden married and to this day they make beautiful music together.

People seem to call the Choroi instrument a "flute" or "recorder" interchangeably. I prefer calling it a flute, but want J and L to know that it can also be called a recorder. So when telling this story I use both words. Tomorrow I'll share how I learned to play and how I teach.